Sticks and Stones

Sticks and Stones

Because I have become so sick and tired of all the branches (e.g. very large sticks) in my yard from all of the storms we have been experiencing, I decided to talk about stones today.  Don’t get me wrong; I love my trees and Michigan’s summer storms, especially after the dry summer we experienced last year.  I am just a little tired of the spring clean-up being extended and making playing in the backyard (and having a fire) a bit more hazardous.

But, I digress.  I came here to talk about stones.  Sound boring?  Wait.  I’m about to reveal something that isn't widely known.  You know of some very well-known stones, right?  Come on, think about it.  Not gemstones, and not Petoskey stones.  I’ll give you another hint.  It’s in the shape of a ring.  If you are thinking of wedding bands, I’m going to be extremely disappointed in all of you.  STONEHENGE is the correct answer.  Well, while they sound really awesome, it’s awfully expensive to go overseas to view them and I've heard you can’t even touch them anymore due to erosion.  I can tell you of some stonehenges in the United States that you probably weren't aware of before.  A couple of them are in my native state of Michigan, just you still can’t touch one of them – they’re a bit hard to get to.

So, I’ll start with America’s Stonehenge.  It’s located in Salem, New Hampshire and they have tours offered for a fee (you can even snowshoe and see alpacas).  No visa required!  It’s a fantastic touristic attraction and no one knows for sure who built it or when.  It could be as old as 4,000 years old.  William Goodwin was known to have done some quarrying around the area, but others are convinced there are pre-Columbian and “Old World” evidence.  But there is evidence of Native American occupation at some point too.  Sounds like a great place to visit and see for yourself what you think is really there and how old it really is. Circa 1907.

Then there’s Sam Hills Henge which is a replica of England’s Stonehenge located in Maryhill, Washington. This was built as a memorial dedicated to the fallen of Klickitat County in World War I. He was a bit confused about the function of the original Stonehenge, believing it was a place of human sacrifice.  He’s reportedly buried at the base of the bluff it was built on overlooking the Columbia River.  Circa 1931.

For my southern friends and acquaintances, you can always go visit the Georgia Guidestones.  Located in Nuberg, Georgia, this replica has its origins deep in mystery.  No one knows the true name of the person wanting it built.  A granite company near the site was approached by a man reportedly called “R.C. Christian” who was carrying a model of the Stonehenge in a shoe box and had very specific requirements of it.  The company built it and became $50,000 wealthier, but the “R.C. Christian” disappeared from existence after making the deposit.  There are several messages in many languages carved on the six stones that make up this replica, one of which demanding we not become a cancer on the earth.  Circa 1980.

For the fun-loving, quirky folks visiting this page, you might want to see Carhenge.  Apparently, this all started with a family reunion and also became a memorial.  Wish mine were so fun! (Uh, reunions, not memorials.)  So, for my Midwestern folks, a visit to Alliance, Nebraska will bring you to the site of some ancient cars (or classic as the case may be) set up like the ancient stones of Great Britain.  It’s a mechanic’s delight!  Be sure to visit the site’s new visitor’s center and the adjacent car-art sculpture park.  Circa 1987.

Then there’s Stonehenge II in Kerrville, Texas.  Not actually stone, except for the single limestone piece the idea sprung from, but steel frames covered in plaster.  There are some Easter Island heads at this site too.  Guess it Al Shepperd thought that another Stonehenge would be better than a fake UFO crash.  I would have gone with UFOs just to be different. Circa 1989.

Now, I’m asking you…FOAMHENGE?  I think we are way too far away from stone to be even close to interesting now.  But, if you want to see a foam replica of Stonehenge, you can see it in Natural Bridge, Virginia.  Circa 2004.

And the last ridiculous one I’m going to talk about before getting serious again is Stonefridge.  Ok, I’m just going to say it, the guy who built it was a bit nuts.  Adam Horowitz spent nine years working on a 200+ refrigerator monument that looks like Stonehenge, but is not even remotely close to replicating it.  It just looks like it – with painted refrigerators.  And he decided to have it made by workers wearing loincloths and using teepee poles, ropes, pulleys, and muscle to build it.  He totally set himself up for the vandals who reportedly set off bombs inside the refrigerators. Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico. Circa 1997. Thankfully removed for good in 2007.

Ok, so back to Michigan.  In 2007 (how ironic is that?), researchers from Northern Michigan College were using a new sonar system to map the bottom of Lake Michigan for evidence of historical events since archaeology cannot be successfully conducted underwater.  During the scans they found old cars, a ring of stones, buggies, boats, Civil-war era piers, and a stone which appears to have a mastodon carved into it.  The stone carving hasn't been verified by the “experts” yet since none are trained in scuba diving, but some believe that it and the ring of stones it was a part of could date back 10,000 years.  That is when humans and mastodons were believed to be in that part of Michigan (Grand Traverse Bay).  These are just another set of standing stones found in the Michigan area.  Beaver Island has a stone circle discovered in 1985 (again, there’s some irony in there if you’re a Back to the Future fan).

References to some of these incredible and incredulous information is in part from an NBCNEWS.com article entitled “America Unhenged: 7 great Stonehenge Replicas”, although America’s Stonehenge doesn't sound like a replica….  Oh well.

Happy Reading!

Warning: Graphic Photo Within

WARNING!!  GRAPHIC PHOTO WITHIN THIS BLOG

Surprised?

I know.  You were probably expecting far worse, so this should be a source of some relief.  This was the surprise awaiting me when I came home from work today.  This is a nice surprise.  I praised and praised my cats for the gift - because it keeps the rodent population down and that means there will be fewer in my house and in my inhumane traps.

But, don't you wish more sites came with some sort of warning regarding the content?  

Recently, I was seeking costume ideas.  Having lost a significant amount of weight, I wanted to wear something tasteful as I took my children around for trick or treating.  I mean - goodness - I haven't lost that much weight, but it does make me feel better about myself to want to be noticed a wee bit.

Since one child is going as an angel and the other a cheerleader, I thought I would have a costume as a Disney character.  This is the type of stuff I found:

Unfortunately, my children were looking over my shoulder while I was doing the search and pointing out how they were pretty dresses and giving their input on which one I should get.  I don't know about you, but I don't remember any of these Disney characters wearing dresses that short and revealing.  I'm just a mom trying to find a costume to wear alongside my kids, but it appears like the majority of the women seeking costumes are college-aged women intending to party it up on Halloween.  Well, that's the impression I'm getting from the type of costumes available in these search engines.

I explained to the girls that Mommy wasn't comfortable wearing so little clothes on a very cold Halloween night while trick-or-treating and moved on in my search for something less revealing.  So, I looked for more generic ideas such as fortune teller, pirate, etc. and all of my size were taken.  Guess the other moms got to them first.  After hours of searching I finally found the perfect costume:

And just in time too.  There are none left.  This was way more the type of costume I was hoping for.  Tasteful and non-threatening and long enough that I might not need a coat.

On a side note, there is a Zombie Walk in Kalamazoo, Michigan this weekend to try for the Guinness World Records.  My sister plans on going and asked me to join her and her boyfriend.  They are going as hippie zombies.  This created a hunt for another costume - a scary one that won't be appreciated by my offspring.  I am going as a corpse bride.  I'll try to get photos and post them in a follow up after the weekend.

So, now for the readers to chime in.  How many parents out there still dress up for Halloween?

Happy Reading!

A Partial Chapter in a Historical Christian Romance I started writing at 19

This is an excerpt of a historical, Christian romance I am re-writing. Let me know what you think and if I need to do anything to clean it up. Have I got your attention and desire to read more? Feedback from an audience would be very welcome.

Darkness had fallen and men moved along the forest shadows just outside the open grounds of a new farming settlement. The ground was still raw from the men who cleared it to make room for their little houses and long fields – soon to be planted with wheat and corn. Fifteen men watched the soft glow of the houses and stables, waiting for the fires to burn out or to be extinguished. Not long before this happened, a rider approached the settlement alone and stayed behind the stables so anyone moving from the house to the stables could not spy them. Many of the pairs of eyes gleamed with greed as they watched the beautiful white mare prance beside her rider after the small slip of a person slid down and quietly removed the tack from the animal. The hood of the cloak the rider wore slid off as the heavy fall of chestnut waves became too much for the material to contain. Several of the watchers began shifting restlessly.

A single man was on the far side of the settlement opposite the fifteen men and scouting for signs of just how many people can be expected inside the houses. He looked up when a woman led a white mare around the side of the stables, then gave it hand signals to stay while she quickly slipped inside the stables. The white mare obeyed and waited for her rider, passively. Muskogizek felt his heart jerk painfully in his chest. He knew that rider. Fear for the woman caused him to silently abandon his mission to get closer to that side of the stables. His eyes darted around for signs of a companion. He was about to move closer, but ducked down when the woman returned to coax the horse into the stables.

Muskogizek moved along the line of trees parallel to the stables, working his way toward the direction the woman rode in from. The signs confirmed she was traveling alone. But, why? It was too dangerous for a woman of her breeding to be traveling alone, especially with the war going on now between the British and the French. While the Great Lakes region was not directly affected, conflicts at the posts and the routing of British settlements, as well as the local animal threats, was enough to make travel dangerous for a lone woman.

He was so absorbed in the tale the signs were telling him, that he did not notice the woman return to a small camp she made behind the stables. He did notice when she made a small fire to heat a small pot of tea over. She was so well-versed in making a fire with so little smoke; no one at the settlement would have noticed someone camped behind their stables. However, the small light the fire gave off was noticed by fifteen pairs of eyes in the woods surrounding the settlement.

Muskogizek could see their shadows shifting through the trees as they grouped together to plan. He noticed they were changing their plans as they spread out again, focusing more on the lone woman than the settlement. They were not even going to wait for him to return from scouting. It became clear to Muskogizek what their intentions were and he vowed to God he would stop them or die trying.

Occasionally an owl or a snort from the nearby stables would break the silence, even the insects didn’t stir at this hour. That was when the young, orphaned British woman that slept so soundly under the stars was awakened by a stirring behind her in the woods. Wolves? No, couldn’t be, she would see glowing eyes blinking at her through the darkness. It must be men. Indians, maybe? As she tried to see through the darkness, her hand slipped under her bed roll and grasped at the cold metal of her father’s pistol. She shivered, brought the covers up around her shoulders more, and watched the shadows move from tree to tree. She sent up a prayer for courage and cocked the pistol.

She thought for sure she would be safer near a farming settlement than deeper into the woods. Abandoned the first night of her journey back to New York, she was determined to continue on. She couldn’t go back. There was nothing for her back there.

Tension fell upon the night as thick as the fast moving clouds. The British woman watched the clouds and wondered if it might storm tomorrow. As she contemplated over the weather, a large dark cloud covered the sky like a blanket. Under the protection of the additional darkness, the creatures in the woods became more bold and ventured closer to the British woman.

Muskogizek crouched with a long spear he fashioned from a nearby branch. In his other hand was a dagger given to him as a gift from a commanding officer at Fort Michilimachinaw. He waited for the men in the forest to make their move. Why they hesitated for so long, he couldn’t tell, but he was certain they knew she would resist or they wouldn’t wait for her to put out the fire and lay down on her bed room to sleep.

The darkness deepened and Muskogizek looked up to see the cloud cover blotted out any light from the stars. The shadows in the tree line started to move again. Muskogizek’s heart was racing and all of his muscles bunched in anticipation of the fight that would begin soon.

The first man to break into the clearing had a crooked nose. He was tall, muscled, but not hugely and had a shock of brown hair that continually fell into his eyes. The man’s eyes were wide with hunger and Muskogizek began to see red with the rage that overwhelmed him. Without being consciously aware he had made the decision, Muskogizek shot out quickly and silently from the tree line on an intercept course. Unfortunately, he was further away and didn’t leave quickly enough. The man had landed on top of the woman who screamed, inciting an owl to screech in protest. The scream was cut off by the man’s hand, while the other hand groped the woman, trying to pull her skirts up.

Muskogizek ran right up to the man and kicked him flat-footed in the face. The man’s head snapped back and a couple of teeth dropped out of his mouth as he rolled off the woman in a stupor. Two men came in from either direction at Muskogizek. He spun, flinging out the spear to hit the man to his right with the butt of his spear in his solar plexus, then the tip of the spear slicked across the cheek of the man to his left.

Four men took their place and hesitated when they realized they were attacking their own scout.

“You will not touch her,” he told them in French.

They shifted, then one elbowed his friend with a grin. “He wants her for himself,” he told his friend.

Muskogizek’s face was fierce, but he did not reply. The men chuckled. They began to walk non-aggressively toward the woman, lying in shock on the ground and panting while one of her hands felt blindly around her bed roll. “You will be last after what you did to Antonne, Paris, and Jean,” one of the men said.

Two of the men lunged at Muskogizek to hold him while the other two lunged at the woman who tired to claw at their faces. They laughed, batted her hands away, tore off her cloak, and pulled at the bodice of her dress until you could hear the material rendering. She kicked and bit at them while Muskogizek fought the men trying to disarm and hold him.

Muskogizek stopped watching what was happening to the woman for a moment and focused on the two men trying to hold him. He wrenched free from one man’s grip on his arm and threw the dagger into the other man’s boot. He went down with a scream while Muskogizek brought the heel of his now free hand up into the nose of the first man, breaking his nose.

The women let out a brief scream which was cut off at the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Muskogizek turned quickly to see the woman crumple at the feet of a man just withdrawing his fist from a blow. The woman’s dress was off completely, leaving her only in a chemise, corset and petticoats. With a roar, he rammed into the man who delivered the blow that rendered her unconscious, knocking them both to the ground so he was straddling the man’s chest and punching him repeatedly until the man stopped moving beneath him. Slowly, he stood, blood dripping from his knuckles, and turned to the man still holding the shredded remains of the woman’s dress. The man was looking around at all of his fallen companions, realization suddenly dawning on him at just how dire his circumstances were. His panicked gaze flew to Muskogizek who was stalking toward the man who lifted the torn dress before him as though it would act as a shield against the Indian. Muskogizek picked up the spear and sent it whirling through the air for a side blow to the temple, knocking the man down. Muskogizek jumped on the man’s back, putting the spear against the man’s trachea.

Muskogizek leaned in to the gasping man to put his lips close to his ear. “That was her favorite dress,” he growled and shifted his weight to deliver the killing thrust, but the spear was ripped from his hands.

He was grabbed from behind and dragged to his feet. A man better dressed than the rest stepped in front of Muskogizek. “You are under arrest for treason. We’ll take you back to the post for sentencing.” The man looked at the unconscious woman and demanded from the rest of his men, “Bring her.”

As men bent to pick her up, Muskogizek pulled free of the men holding him and pushed them away. He scooped the woman up into his arms and faced the men watching him. “Only I will touch her. She will stay confined with me and only I will attend to her.” Then, he began walking back to the horses tethered in the trees deeper in the woods. No one challenged him.

Please take note that this is my own work from my own imagination. All characters are purely fictional and any resemblance in any way to anyone is merely coincidental. Any copying and redistribution of this material will also fall within copyright infringement.